Oracle Blog

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Sunday Feb 22, 2009

At the Omniture Summit '09 last week I listened to a keynote presentation by George Colony, head honcho over at Forrester. I found his style very entertaining and his points mostly on target. I recently took a look at his blog, and I think I really like this guy. His blog is definitely worth a read. (I also love the irony that in the brave new world of social media, I, Joe Nobody, can announce with a straight face to my faceless readership that I approve of the founder of Forrester. I also approve of Peter Gabriel and Scott McNealy, by the way.)

Thursday Feb 19, 2009

I'm out at the Ominture Summit '09 in Salt Lake City this week, and I'm very pleased to report that it doesn't suck. I was very worried that I was paying three grand for a two-day sales pitch, but I took a leap of faith and registered anyway. Turns out that feedback from previous years' conferences have inspired Omniture to dial back the product pitches and user-oriented content. This year, there has been a wealth of useful information on Internet marketing in general and very few product sales pitches.

And as an added bonus, as I'm writing this post, I just won a Corsair vintage radio from Vintage Tub & Bath for being quick to raise my hand.

The big take-aways for me have been:

I think I finally get Twitter. I singed up for a Twitter account, just to play with it, but I hadn't quite comprehended how Twitter is useful for a company or organization. Twitter has been a big theme at this conference. Everyone is trying to figure out what to do with this untested new marketing channel. Look for more from me there in the near future.

An important point that I missed before is that to be successful in the brave new world of social networking, you have to be a full participant. It's not enough to just broadcast. The communication has to be 2-way.

Building a community is a lot like creating viral media. There's no formula. You can't just create a community. All you can do is seed the ground and hope something grows. You can, however, do a lot to encourage the right things to grow and to help things along. In the end, it really does still come down to content.

Brand has to be pervasive. Martin Lindstrom calls it "smashable brand," meaning that the brand should be recognizable by even the smallest fragment. Is your website obviously your if you take away the logos and products? His new book, Buy-ology, looks pretty interesting. We all got free copies, so I'll let you know if it was after I've had a chance to read it.

Mobile is the next marketing frontier. Makes me glad I don't have a data plan.